


Dancing the Divine

by livrelibre



Category: House'llelujah - Stromae (Music Video)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/pseuds/livrelibre
Summary: The story of the music and the movement from Vega, Vanessa. Dancing the Divine: The Rise of the House’llelujah Movement. University of Chicago Press, 2035.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fireinthedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireinthedark/gifts).



> The canon for this is a music video, House'llelujah by Stromae (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI-Ul9Lapi4) so no real knowledge is necessary. Quoted lyrics and English translation are from here: https://muzikum.eu/en/127-7337-218555/stromae/housellelujah-english-translation.html
> 
> Any similarity of quoted authors to actual house music artists is intentional and super fake.
> 
> Thanks to Longwhitecoats and Stepquietly for wonderful betaing and cheerleading (all mistakes introduced my own), fireinthedark for the request that turned me on to this song, and all the transcendent dance floors and communities and models of resistance from my life for inspiration.

From Vega, Vanessa. _Dancing the Divine: The Rise of the House’llelujah Movement_. University of Chicago Press, 2035.

Sources disagree on the origins of the rise of DJ Prophet and the new religious movement House’llelujah. David Morales cites as the impetus for the movement: the Great Collapse of 2018; the global rise of fascism and erosion of the safety net; and the general failure of established institutions and religions to deal with the fallout. Todd Terry also credits a return to the early strains of spiritual transcendence in classic house music. Its early roots in African-American gay culture carried with it echoes of the black church; the repetitive, trance-like drum beat - one of house’s main features - is a staple of other religious music of the world; and "God is a DJ," besides being a classic progressive house track by the ironically named Faithless, was not an uncommon theme in underground dance music. So perhaps it is not unexpected that a musical movement that had its fervent acolytes and multiple sub-genres should finally spawn its own religion, though no one had foreseen the power and spread of the House’llelujah movement of the late 2020s. 

The scene rose to prominence in major cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York City, London; however, the first recorded video broadcast masses by DJ Prophet took place in Brussels. Some speculate they first began as anti-raves, concerts, or tongue-in-cheek performance art satirizing the Big Brother-esque rallies of several national leaders and religious figures. However, these events, taking place in abandoned, repurposed, or even temporarily hijacked churches, warehouses and storefronts, soon became much more. The phenomenon of ecstatic trances - common in other traditions, such as the evangelical Christian practice of “catching the holy spirit” - was first recorded in these early masses and became a feature of the movement.

The anthem played at these events, " _House’llelujah_ ", from which the movement gained its name, soon took on a life of its own and became an underground club hit. DJ Prophet (otherwise known as Belgian-Rwandan performer Paul Van Haver aka Stromae) soon moved from the minimalist online masses to large-scale rave-like parties turned revivals that drew enormous crowds, particularly of disaffected youth and marginalized groups, though the movement’s inclusiveness drew most sectors of society eventually. In DJ Prophet and House’llelujah, these people, outcasts in the world order, found refuge from a society that did not hear them, from religions that contradicted their own teachings and told them that they did not belong. In House’llelujah, they found a spiritual movement that accepted them. As the song says:

> J'entend des voix,  
>  Des voix de gens que je ne vois,  
>  Si toi aussi tu les perçoit  
>  C'est qu'tu avait perdu la foi  
>  C'est c'que je pris durant la nuit  
>  Lorsque je lève mes mains au ciel  
>  Lorsque je saute et que je crie  
>  C'est l'éternel qui me le dit  
>  House'llelujah ...

When translated from the French, this section reads as follows:

> I hear voices,  
>  Voices of people I don't see,  
>  If you feel them too  
>  Then you had lost faith  
>  That is what I pray at night  
>  When I raise my hands to heaven  
>  When I jump and scream  
>  The Lord tells me that  
>  House'llelujah ...

The movement and its origins soon took on an outsized mythos of their own, as seen in the descriptions in Kym Mazelle’s 2021 best-selling book on the origins of the movement, _Raise Your Hands._

> “First came the voices - buried in subwoofer static, discernible in the drop - which led DJ Prophet to trace out parables in the transition between songs. Then came the masses in digital halls, lit only by the screen showing our prophet - only a conduit he would say, and finally the ecstatic midnight masses where he played our songs. People came from all walks of life, all those who had lost faith in the ever-shifting gods. Here the only god was music, the beat that thrummed through us all, that led us to fall down, speaking in tongues, bodies caught in the beatific dance, transported to a higher plane by rhythm and beat, like the tambors of old, the whirling like Sufi mystics, finding the divine through the physical. We were a confederation of beloved freaks and believers in the power of music to lift us all. In certain inner circles, The Children, holy acolytes all, would bring out the tambourines and thrill to the drum machine, spreading baby powder on the floor to better perform their swirling devotions, catching the Holy Spirit and falling out as they might have in older evangelical churches, only this time to a 4/4 beat.” 

The movement continued to grow throughout the early 2020s, despite the efforts of authorities in major cities to crack down on the now-banned parties. House’llelujah was well-served by its roots in the underground, and acolytes simply returned to word-of-mouth, cryptic flyers, and underground zines and dark web sites to promote the events. There were the inevitable schisms and offshoots - deeper house (whose mysteries followed in a tradition of African syncretism), EUhouse (a reaction to the schisms of Brexit and deterioration of the European Union), acidism, and of course smaller branches of the movement like the Knucklesians, Mayists, and the Coxites. Reactions of mainstream religions, especially the evangelical groups who already frowned upon dancing, were swift; for example, nearly all evangelical Christian traditions - not just the strict Southern Baptists - returned to the no dancing days of yore, and the suppression of Sufi whirling in Turkey recurred as it had in the early twentieth century. However, certain groups, beyond existing Christian house producers, tried to incorporate elements of the new movement, inspiring a mercifully short-lived series of uptempo Lutheran hymns and an earnest remix of selections from the UU songbook, _Singing the Living Tradition_. As with earlier house music, there were also efforts by corporations and authorities to mainstream and, in some cases, co-opt the radically inclusive House’llelujah movement; however, the commercials, large-scale concerts, and government rallies were never able to approximate or derail the energy of the underground movement.

The spread of the House’llelujah movement into social and political activism and its instrumental role in the overthrow of various governments could fill an entire other volume. In the beginning, these masses and raves functioned as a spiritual outlet for the outcast and unheard; however, it did not take long for these sites to become centers for resistance and community as other religious movements have in the past, such as African-American and liberation theology churches, reform synagogues, Sufi shrines and progressive mosques. Followers and activists were able to meet, plan, and motivate each other in the back rooms and corners of House’llelujah parties, and soon began throwing their own revolutionary raves explicitly against the system. Not just meaningless party anthems, regular hits critiqued the government and mainstream religions, voiced disapproval at societal trends leading to the Great Collapse, and exhorted listeners to think critically and take a stand. House’llelujah choruses became not only underground hits but also chants at aboveground rallies and protests. It is difficult to estimate the numbers of House’llelujah artists and followers who were also activists in the New Generation movement that toppled the leaders of several dictatorships, autocracies, and illiberal democracies; however, it is safe to say that House’llelujah was and is a movement that will continue to have an impact far beyond the dance floor for years to come.


End file.
